In vitro fertilization (IVF) is an important technique for providing family planning options. Although a relatively mature area of science, in practice IVF remains expensive and stressful for people. Consequently, IVF personnel are extremely conservative is the adoption of new technologies. In particular, personnel refuse to adopt any technology that could have an adverse effect on the success of an IVF procedure, either through the procedure itself or through the introduction of materials that may be toxic. This reticence extends to every aspect of the procedure including the tools and technologies that play a supporting role in the IVF procedure.
The recent focus on the high cost of health care has placed pressure on all personnel to reduce overhead. Reducing overhead includes streamlining the record keeping. However, the extreme reticence of IVF personnel has lead most personnel to not adopt techniques that would reduce recording keeping costs because of concerns that introducing new technology will introduce new dangers.
One area of concern is the tracking of biological material such as gamete and embryo materials. Since no mistakes are acceptable, there is high importance placed on accurately tracking materials in the fertility clinic and laboratories. These materials typically are handled by several personnel and are moved from location to location multiple times within the facility. Thus, there are several chances for mistakes to be made.
This has led fertility clinics and laboratories to permanently mark containers, such as culture dishes and other labware. Predominately, labware is hand-marked with a carbide tipped stylus. The markings on the culture dishes are often repeated on the top (lid) of the dish and on the bottom of the dish and the markings consist of anywhere from 10-100 characters (approximately). Hand engraving the culture dishes consumes thousands of hours of staff time. Hand engraving is open to errors in duplication because the engraving has to be completed up to twenty times for each procedure. Moreover, this process is usually completed in a sterile environment and thus is not amenable to completion by less trained staff and is usually completed by an embryologist or laboratory technician, so as to preserve the sterile, non-toxic environment of the dishes and the laboratory.
The present invention overcomes one or more of these problems.